- Marcus Cooper, Renee Lopez, Loren Ware, and an unidentified participant (photo courtesy of Benji Vương)
The Portland Police Bureau announced this week it’s permanently moving six officers to its Gang Enforcement Team to “address rising gun violence.”
“Recent gun violence has gravely impacted our community and is a reminder to police that we must remain fluid in our response. As with other spikes in gun violence,” wrote Chief Lawrence P. O’Dea, III in a news release. “We must respond with additional officers to help reduce incidents.”
But the two men—activist Marcus Cooper, 26, and rapper Loren Ware, 23, who performs as Glenn Waco—who were arrested last week following a shooting (neither man was involved in the actual shooting) at an unsanctioned Last Thursday celebration on Alberta Street near 20th Ave. say that’s a bullshit claim.
“This is a crime scene,” Ware says. “I’m not talking about (the shooting) last Thursday. I’m talking about this: Alberta (Street). We walk in what used to be our neighborhoods and get looked at as if we don’t belong.”
Read more after the jump.
Cooper, Ware, Renee Lopez (who shot a video of the two men being arrested and was interviewed by police as a witness to last week’s shooting), and about two dozen supporters on Wednesday gathered in front of Don Pancho Taqueria in the first of what Cooper says will be at least two protests.
“It’s crazy how (incidents in) our area are ‘gang related,’ and yet we’re getting kicked out of our own area,” Cooper says. “So whenever we show up to our area, we are the gang.”
Both men spoke about the gentrification happening in Northeast Portland. Cooper talked about having to be home “by the time the streetlights came on” when he was a kid, saying that if he didn’t make it on time other neighborhood moms would shoo him home where he was supposed to be. It’s not like that anymore, he says. As the demographic changed and outsiders moved into what used to be a predominantly black neighborhood, that sense of community faded.
“If a community has no unity there is no identity,” Cooper says.
Neither Cooper nor Ware spoke directly about the incident or the criminal charges they face, but they had a lot to say about what they see as police injustice and a fragmented neighborhood.
“If Mayor Hales feels like he and his crew can patrol the streets, harass and terrorize our communities, then we have the right to question the police every time they set foot in our communities and approach one of us,” Ware says. “Blacks make up roughly 6 percent of the population, but 40 percent of the traffic stops,” he says. “Do you see and issue?”
Here’s the full video of Cooper and Ware speaking (video courtesy of Benji Vương):
It’s called intelligent policing / constructive profiling. I know that sounds un-PC, but it’s the truth and is necessary especially in the heightened state of shootings this city is experiencing this year that have involved almost entirely one demographic. What do think they should be doing, focusing more time on little old ladies or groups of 20 somethings having brunch on alberta?
And to this Glen Waco toolbag..if you would stop acting like a criminal (beating a man for having your 2-series BMW towed because you repeatedly blocked his driveway) or confronting cops at active crime scenes (yes I have seen the video from this past week, and it doesn’t lie), maybe you would stop being treated like one. Give it up, you are causing more harm than good at this point.
It was Marcus Cooper, not Glen Waco, who was arrested and convicted of entering a strangers home and beating him for having his BMW towed. I guess that’s the “sense of community” he’s talking about …
“It’s crazy how (incidents in) our area are ‘gang related,’ and yet we’re getting kicked out of our own area,” Ware says. “So whenever we show up to our area, we are the gang.”
I really don’t understand what this means.
It’s called “Intelligent Commenting.” Learn how to do it.
Beware anyone who calls themselves a “activist”.
It’s about the same damn thing these days as calling oneself a “documentary film maker”.
(All due respects to Errol Morris)
Activist dancer Glenn Waco never talks about anything other than activist dancer Glenn Waco; even when the question is about attempted homicide he was standing next to.
Thanks for that turd of an off-topic (no topic really) post, Dude. Nothing I said was anything but common sense and intelligent.
I’m intelligent and have common sense too.
Wow, this daily self-affirmation stuff really does work.
I don’t get why so many people needed to record this? Why not just introduce yourself beforehand and then share the vid, oh wait. I forgot. Portland. Nobody. Ever. Does. That.